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October 20, 2003

Notes to the Editors of The Chronicle

The church on Mission Street you wrote about on Page One Saturday is not St. Patrick's Cathedral. It is St. Patrick's Church. It's only been in the neighborhood -- no more than 150 yards away from The Chronicle offices in any of the paper's varied locales -- since 1851. Get to know the neighborhood, guys. Gosh. ... The story you published Tuesday under the 27-word headline, "Frisco, that once-verboten term for the city by the bay, is making a comeback among the young and hip. Herb Caen is spinning at warp speed." is not only dubious theologically, it is also appallingly ignorant. Caen was not, as the article asserts, "The point man for the anti-Frisco brigade." The title of his book, cited in The Chronicle, "Don't Call It Frisco," was not an ultimatum by the author. The title is ironic. If you read the column in the book by that title you'll see it was written in the voice of a bemused San Franciscan recalling that indeed the nabobs shuddered at calling the place Frisco, but so foggy is the debate, the narrator doesn't know why this is so. Indeed, the same book contains an admiring essay on the character of certain old-time San Franciscans under the title "They Called It Frisco." In a later column, bemoaning the stuffy state of The City, Caen reflected that San Francisco was "a city that wished people would call her Frisco again." This essay was titled an imploring "Please Call it Frisco?" Caen's position was nuanced, moody, changeable, like The City. Get it right. Gosh. ... And the article in Sunday's paper that London-style taxicabs will soon be hacking it up on the streets of Frisco is no scoop. Readers of the P. J. Blogolumn (there's a brand-new word -- just made it up this morning -- for you) read it here first last August. ... Gosh....